Glasgow, summer, 1973. Dustmen are striking; bags of garbage add to the blight of council flats and a fetid canal. Ryan, who's about 12, drowns during a play fight with his neighbor, the ... See full summary »

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Storyline

Glasgow, summer, 1973. Dustmen are striking; bags of garbage add to the blight of council flats and a fetid canal. Ryan, who's about 12, drowns during a play fight with his neighbor, the jug-eared James. James runs home, a flat where he lives with his often-drunk da, his ma, and sisters, who live in hope of moving to newly-built council flats. The slice-of-life, coming-of-age story follows James as he tags along with the older lads; has a friendship with his quirky wee rodent-loving neighbor, Kenny; spends time with Margaret Anne, myopic, slightly older, the local sexual punching bag; and, has a moment or two of joy. The strike may end, but is there any way out for James? Written by
<jhailey@hotmail.com>

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This is the most beguiling British film about childhood since Kes (1969), a slowburning look at days in the life of a small boy on the brink of adolescence. He has adolescent encounters, including an uneasy bath with an unpopular older girl, but he's very much a pre-adolescent child, with all the helplessness and vulnerability that that means. Lynne Ramsay's great strength as a filmmaker is an ability to recreate the world as seen through her characters' eyes. From with the deprivation, the film is set on a housing estate during a binman's strike, she finds moments of real beauty - a joyfully filmed tumble in a hayfield - and strikingly surreal moments, such as a backward boy's pet mouse flying to the moon on a balloon. If Ratcatcher has a forerunner, excepting Ramsay's own award-winning shorts, it is not The Bill Douglas Trilogy, a semi-still life of a Scottish slum boy, which it eclipses completely, but the great hand-crafted films of Lindsay Anderson: This Sporting Life; If..., and O Lucky Man!

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